Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Keep "purposiveness" when the sentence already sounds natural, when a synonym would add unintended emphasis, or when readers need the most familiar wording. A synonym should clarify or sharpen the message, not simply make the sentence look more varied.
If two options seem close, choose the one that best matches the audience and purpose of the sentence.
Choose a synonym only if it keeps the core idea of "purposiveness" intact in the sentence you are editing.
Check whether the replacement sounds more formal, casual, emotional, technical, or forceful than the original word.
Read the full sentence after the swap. Keep the synonym only when the sentence becomes clearer or more precise.
Review note: Synonym lists are ranked with lexical data and reviewed for practical writing value. Use the comparison notes, sentence evidence, and source labels together; a high-ranking synonym can still be wrong when the audience, register, or grammar changes.
After choosing a replacement for "purposiveness", read the sentence once for meaning and once for rhythm. The best synonym should feel natural in the full sentence, not only accurate in a word list.
If the synonym makes the sentence slower, vaguer, or more dramatic than intended, keep "purposiveness" or choose a simpler alternative from the closest-match group.
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
4 total sentences available.
1853, William Benjamin Carpenter, Principles of Human Physiology, Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 5th American and 4th Enlarged London Edition, Chapter 14, p. 675, These reflex actions of the Spinal Cord have much more regularity and apparent purposiveness in the lower Vertebrata, approaching in this respect to the reflex actionso fhte ganglionic column of Articulata, than they have in Man.
Source: wiktionary
The majestic spectacle of this blind, inarticulate purposiveness thrusting its way upward and ever upward in an endless unity of differentiated achievements towards an ever-increasing complexity of organisation, towards spontaneity and spirituality, swept away all my old conception of a duty to Man as such.
Source: wiktionary
1963, Walter Cerf (translator), Analytic of the Beautiful from The Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Third Moment, § 10, p. 24, If the concept of an object is regarded as the cause of the object (as the real source of its possibility), then that object is a purpose; and purposiveness […] is the causality of a concept with respect to its object.
Source: wiktionary
We do not regard uranium as having any in-built purpose, or in-built drives or tendencies, at least not in the way that animals have; organisms, on the other hand, have a purposiveness, and death puts an end to such purposiveness.
Source: wiktionary
Closest matches include aim, deliberateness, design theory, goal orientation, intentionality.
Compare the replacement against real sentence context. This entry includes sample sentences so you can check tone, grammar, and meaning before swapping words.